Kingston,
Ont.—A tearful Police Chief Bill Closs apologized yesterday to black people in
Kingston after being confronted with proof they are stopped by officers three
times more often than whites.

Then Closs challenged police chiefs across Canada to monitor their forces for
racial profiling.

"It's time the police chiefs look at themselves in the mirror and said to
themselves, `What is going on in my organization?'" he said. "My
officers took the risk. They knew there'd be consequences and they demonstrated
integrity."

Toronto Police Services Board chair Pam McConnell pledged that a similar
"made-in-Toronto" version of the monitoring would be put in the hands
of the city's police force within the next eight months.

She called the results "very disturbing" but not unexpected.

"This is a road map for the future," said McConnell, in Kingston with
fellow board member Alok Mukherjee to witness the data analysis first-hand.

"For me, this affirmed what we all know. It begs the question of us, what
will we do about this?"

The Kingston force was the first in the country to ban racial profiling and keep
tabs on the race of people stopped by officers over the course of a year, from
Oct. 1, 2003 to Sept. 30, 2004.

Yesterday the analysis of that data was released, revealing great disparities:

Blacks
were stopped by police about three times as often as whites.

More
than 40 per cent of black males between the ages of 15 and 24 were stopped
during the year, compared to 11 per cent of their white counterparts.

About
10 per cent of the stops involving a black person resulted in an arrest or
charge, compared to 6 per cent of the stops involving whites.

"That is significantly higher. It's almost a 60 to 70 per cent higher
arrest rate," said University of Toronto criminology professor Scot Wortley,
who analyzed the data for the force as an independent outsider.

Toronto Police Association president Dave Wilson said he was disturbed that
McConnell would say that the Kingston study confirms "what we all
know" but said the association is open to the idea of a study.

"Our position has always been that we profile behaviour," he said in a
phone interview last night. "We don't profile race. So let's design a study
that answers the question why."

Wilson said policing issues in Toronto and Kingston are different.
"Obviously this would impact our front-line officers," he said.
"In order for Toronto to conduct a meaningful study, it has to address the
question of why people were stopped."

Toronto officers will be able to see the presentation next Tuesday, at a forum
in Toronto, hosted in part by the Ontario Police College and the Ontario
Association of Chiefs of Police.

Applauding Closs for his heartfelt apology and courage, Toronto black activist
Margaret Parsons urged Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair to "take a page from
the Kingston police service's book and implement such a study."

"It doesn't decrease police morale. It improves relations with the African
Canadian and aboriginal communities, and from here we can make change,"
said Parsons, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic.

Blair has said he thinks racial profiling exists on the Toronto force and
declared improving relationships with the city's many diverse communities was
his top priority.

But hearing the results of the Kingston project from the Toronto Star yesterday,
Blair said he has reservations about the methodology involved in collecting
race-based statistics.

"I'm absolutely committed to addressing the issue of bias and racial bias
in policing. We are not averse to getting as much information as we can,"
he said from Toronto yesterday. "I just want it done right."

There are also questions about whether the year-long project conducted by
Kingston's 177 police officers in a city of 114,000 people could be expanded to
Toronto, population 2.5 million, with a police force of 5,260.

In 2001, the number of black residents in Kingston numbered 685 — less than 1
per cent of the city's predominantly white population. Comparatively, according
to the 2001 census, Toronto has 204,000 black residents, accounting for 8.3 per
cent of the population.

But Wortley said the data-collecting system could be implemented in Toronto, in
a modified form, to reflect the realities of policing in a large city.

"If you don't do it, the black community will say, `Why not? What have you
got to hide?'" he said after his 90-minute presentation. "By not doing
it, Toronto is putting itself in a position where it seems they are hiding
something. If you are serious about improving police relations with minority
groups, you're going to have to seriously consider implementing a monitoring
program."

Closs also included the city's aboriginals in his apology.

"I believe racial profiling exists. I believe biased policing exists
because we're all humans," the chief said, vowing to address the problem
within the force.

"I find no fault in individual police officers. I find fault in the
organization and I'm responsible for that organization."

The chief launched the project two years ago, in bid to stamp out public
accusations that the force was racist. The best way of moving forward, he said,
was collecting statistics to show whether there was a problem.

The move was prompted by the dramatic arrest of three innocent teenagers — two
of them black — by police officers on a winter night in 2001. The teens were
riding in a black Mercedes, looking for a garbage can so they could toss out
their Chinese food takeout bags.

Following a panicked 911 call, officers misidentified the youths — one of whom
was only 12 — as gangsters involved in a much-earlier assault.

Two years later, one of those same youths was again stopped by officers at
gunpoint. Then 19, Mark Wallen had been walking home with a friend from
basketball practice when an officer ordered him to stop and take his hands out
of his pockets. When Wallen asked why, the officer pulled out his gun.

A disciplinary panel found the officers "acted in good faith."

In Toronto, blacks have often accused officers of treating them differently than
whites. That was confirmed in an award-winning Star series that examined
police arrests in Toronto from 1996 to 2002.

In particular, blacks charged with simple drug possession were taken to a police
station more often than whites facing the same charge, the analysis found. And
once at the station, black suspects were held overnight for a bail hearing at
twice the rate of whites.

The data also showed a disproportionate number of black motorists were ticketed
for offences that routinely would come to light following a traffic stop.

A $2.7 billion class-action lawsuit brought by the Toronto Police Association
against the Star was eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Racial profiling, or racially biased policing, has been widely criticized by
Wortley and other academics as an ineffective method of policing that involves
the association — whether conscious or not — of certain types of crime with
skin colour, which leads to a disproportionate number of stops and the
stigmatization of communities.